It’s very unclear to me what the intended experience of challenging a difficult boss is meant to be.
You clear out the trash mobs and resources in an area, you go up to a boss with full durability, loaded up on food, have a good battle, get them low but ultimately lose, and now… what?
I’ve burnt several food items I’m not getting back, I’ve lost durability I need to pay to recover, there’s no mobs nearby to grind on, no ingredients nearby to harvest.
I challenge them a couple more times, being stingier with my few remaining resources until I’m out of food, my gear is damaged, and I’m basically locked out of even attempting the boss again until I go wander to some other distant area and slowly refill on heals and money to fix/replace my gear.
That seems like it cannot be the intended experience of fighting a boss, as you basically get one good go before you have to go do chores for an hour before you can go again, but presently I don’t see how else you could be intended to play.
Suffice to say, if that is the intended loop, it needs to be seriously reconsidered.
Yeah. By all means, create bosses that are so difficult they’re going to kick my teeth in repeatedly. But you have to let me keep trying.
This is one thing good soulslike games all do well. I’m happy to die to Malenia, Isshin, Midir, etc for hours on end while I slowly get better at their attack patterns and movesets. I’m not happy to fight the boss once, die, go farm materials for 15 minutes, fight the boss again, die, go farm materials for 15 minutes, repeat ad nauseum. That loop puts a much lower ceiling on how difficult you can make bosses before players will get frustrated and just walk away, and I’d rather have bosses stay hard.
there is an npc you can get early on, hes a chef you just have to do a search and rescue mission for him, sells unlimited basic recipe foods and unlimited of the healing flower, as far as the difficulty of the bosses goes you might want to try slotting in a ranged option for when they are too far to punish, you can get spells that can slot into any weapon from the enchanter vender in the main town, if she doesnt have offensive options you can upgrade her for 10 wood and 5 copper, its a little bit of an investment but itll give you a solid damaging option at range, you could also try upgrading the smithy instead and mabey making your own weapons, i havnt played around with it yet but it every weapon has a bunch of abilities you can slot into however you want (think dragons dogma) im sure at least one option has a solid ranged option. if non of that works you can make grenades tier 1s do 35 damage a pop and tier 2s do 55, hp is relatively low in this game so any 20 of those will probally kill a boss
“You could farm mats to make 20 grenades to spam at bosses from a distance” I think very much misses the point of the issue with the gameplay loop I’m describing here. I don’t have a problem with fighting the bosses, I’m not complaining that the bosses are too hard, I’m saying that the possibility of losing does not currently seem to be factored into the systems design in any reasonable fashion.
can you explain better? from what i gathered the problem was using all your mats and dying and than not having enough heals for a second attempt, i addressed that issues, there is an npc that sells you unlimited health pots for cheap and advanced recipes, and the second issued seemed to be you struggling with the boss fights so i offered solutions to that
its a search and rescue quest that offers you a permenant npc at your home base, you can get him right after the first boss, he even sells an advanced cooking recipe that offers way better healing and makes use of all the extra meat you have.
I tried the boss 3 times without using any heals just to learn the moveset + the weapon repairs are free at this point. It is not a very challenging boss, but my advice for everyone would be to just spare the food. There’s no need to waste food on a boss that’s next to the spawn point. Just learn the moveset and use healing items only when you’re sure you can beat the boss. I reached 10% without any healing items on my 3rd attempt
I totally agree here. Not just for bosses but gameplay in general. There needs to be easy access to food and even health pots. Mobs should also drop food items more often even at the beginning here. If this is going to be like WoW with resources needed like food/mana etc. then there should be easy access to the items needed like how they have food vendors. I’ve no desire to farm mats just to be able to play, especially in resource intensive areas like bosses.
recourses respawn overtime, you will notice in your map that parts fade to black which means resources have respawne there and you only need 1 muschroom and 1 grass you should have no probs get a bunch of healing items.
you will also find more recipes to cook with giving you more ways to healing
once you unlock the city it’s very easy to restock using merchants n stuff.
you are meant to go back through areas you were to explore it again.
i think what they should do is have the smithy you rescue sell you healing items at a discounted price before you reach the city.
This mechanic has frustrated me enough that i’ve resorted to reopening backups saves from the main menu. It’s the only solution for those who can’t be bothered to keep repairing their items
Im just stuck, no stuff, no money, no food, i try my best but im bad at the game (Im ok with that and it’s not an issue with souls like, i can try more at no cost) and now im just soft-lock, there is nothing funny about that.
You clear out the trash mobs and resources in an area, you go up to a boss with full durability, loaded up on food, have a good battle, get them low but ultimately lose, and now… what?
New weapon, weapon enhancement, new strategy/timing, different armor class for faster dodges, working on parry timing, etc. I am having troubles as well but there are ways to think about approaching it differently. It’s the first day!
Yeah this became a problem for me a bit later after the first boss. If you explore a lot and end up dying trying to learn combat mechanics or just trying to beat enemies, you’ll burn through food and tools quickly. Then you either have to buy more, which will drain your gold pretty quick, or run around foraging for cooking ingredients. This can be avoided by purposely not healing while your practicing combat mechanics, but that gets tedious as well because, at first, you’ll die quickly many times and then have to run back to the enemy you’re trying to practice on. And if you’re just trying to explore and end up dying a lot in the process, which I think should be expected, well, then you’re just going to run out of food and tools fast.
I think the idea with the current system is that you get to keep your progress on looting and any enemies you’ve killed in the area, but you don’t get to keep your food, tools, or weapon durability. Honestly, the weapon durability degrading across repeat attempts is the most frustrating and punishing thing in my opinion. I don’t think you should lose durability on items if you die. Food and tools I guess are ok to lose, but then I need a relatively quick and easy way to get them back. Running around looking for ingredients to cook isn’t fun.
I agree. I understand that some form of punishment is needed when dying; but it’s maybe worthwhile rethinking weapon durability & healing items.
As pointed by someone else before: it is not really fun gameplay to farm resources after dying to a boss just to have the same conditions you had on your first try. Especially when aiming for challenging souls-like boss fights.
Souls games don’t punish you for failing a boss, they punish you for failing a boss while carrying souls/runes (a resource that does not affect your performance in the fight)
Exactly this. As I said in a different comment, dying should never affect your ability to keep playing the game. That is silly beyond belief in a game where dying is expected to happen often. I don’t even understand how this made it past the drawing board and I hope they do something about it soon.
I think the idea is your adjustment period is while you have infinite free repairs early on. As someone said above; I think it’s best to try and beat the boss without using mats (parry is easier than any other method IMO).
The early part was a bit crushing for me as well, but the free repairs really made up for it. Maybe if 0 durability weapon/armor just meant 50% effectiveness or something; I think resource gathering items breaking still makes sense.
Folks, I do not need advice on what could be done to beat a challenging boss. I can beat the boss.
What I’m asking is, no matter what your strategy is, let’s say I did everything you just suggested, and I died 3 more times, now what?
The combination of long respawn times on enemies/resources, rapidly degrading durability that costs scarce resources that you cannot readily farm to recover, and your only heals also using scarce resources you can’t readily farm to recover, makes your number of attempts at any given boss incredibly limited before you have to travel to a completely different part of the map, now undergeared without heals, in order to get yourself back in fighting shape.
Some people seem to be implying that I’m talking about Warrick here, which if you’re struggling like that on Warrick, Godspeed to you. I one banged Warrick pretty handily, but bosses after that are not nearly as generously balanced relative to when you might encounter them.
Assuming “lose all your resources and then arduously grind to get them all back” isn’t in fact the intended loop, all that really leaves is “fight any new boss one time without using any heals and if it doesn’t seem like they’re a total pushover, just leave and grind forever” which again, if your objective is to be a challenging, Souls-ish experience, denying people the option to even have challenging fights because challenging fights are aggressively punished by the systems design seems antithetical to that goal.
I have worried about that a lot before beating Warrick. It kinda seems like chests and resources respawn frequently enough to always earn money very fast but the unstructured ways you have to go for that are kinda confusing. It’s a bit… anticlimactic? You lose, all your healing is burned, you randomly wander off into the mountains to train (wait for mushrooms and herbs to recover) and eventually come back xD